….happy St. Patrick’s Day
Silent Sunday – March 17, 2019
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Category Archives: birds
Lens-Artist Photo Challenge – Around the Neighbourhood
…thanks to Travels and Trifles for hosting this Weekly Photo Challenge
Most of my photos are of the neighbourhood. It’s not the nicest time of year so some of my photos for this post are from various times throughout the year.
Wacky Bird Wednesday
….’it’s a hummingbird’
According to Winnie this is a hummingbird. It does have a long beak, I’ll give her that. We finally heard back on her reaction to this week’s Monster Monday. She declared that monsters visited her room and this one’s name was Fred.
Big Eyes
…Thursday’s drawing for Winnie was this crazy ‘eyed’ bird
Winnie’s response? “It’s a chicken!”
Birds at the Toronto Zoo
….cold, grey and windy outside but warm and calm indoors
On Sunday, despite the forecast of high winds and rain, the Turners and I ventured to the Toronto Zoo. We had a lovely day and the rain never materialized to more than a mist and the high winds held off until we left.
One of my favourite places at the zoo is the Rain Forest Pavilion. For one thing it’s very dry and quite warm in there. It houses some beautiful greenery and some very interesting birds. One of the most interesting for me was the Hamerkop. This is a medium sized bird that lives in the wetlands of Madagascar, Africa and Arabia. It is famous for the large nests it likes to build and the one at the Toronto Zoo is no exception.
Homer is free to fly around the pavilion and the staff leave nesting materials lying around for him to build his dome shaped nest. These nests can be as big as 2 metres deep and 2 metres wide. Not only has Homer used the building materials that are left for him but he’s clearly found other objects, like mittens and pieces of paper to add to his structure.
Most of the other birds were kept in more enclosed areas to protect them from flying into the cold outside. They seemed pretty content with their surroundings where there were numerous trees, perches and resting areas.
Some birds were very happy to share a space with the resident rhinoceros .
Mundane Monday #200 – Crop
….thanks to Ko Rural Mad as Hell blog for hosting Mundane Monday
Dictionary result for crop
/kräp/
noun
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a cultivated plant that is grown as food, especially a grain, fruit, or vegetable.“the main crops were oats and barley”
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an amount of produce harvested at one time.“a heavy crop of fruit”
synonyms: harvest, year’s growth, yield, produce, vintage, gathering, reaping, gleaning, garnering; fruits“some farmers lost their entire crop” -
an abundance of something, especially a person’s hair.“he had a thick crop of wiry hair”
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the total number of young farm animals born in a particular year on one farm.
This bird certainly has a thick crop of feathers on top of his head.
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An abundant crop of apples on the tree and vegetables at the market.
A New Bird for Winnie
….a little under the weather so my husband missed a few drawing days
Today’s drawing would have been good for Weird Bird Wednesday but it was posted today. Winnie’s only comment today was that Sundays should be Sunday Rabbits. Kevin’s working on that.
In the Cubby?
….had to ask where the cubby was
When our granddaughter saw today’s drawing she said it had to go in the cubby. We know that at preschool she has a cubby to store her personal items. Maybe all Valentine related things need to stay there until the big day.
Red Duck
….#3 of the transparency film collages
I’m really enjoying this technique and as promised I tried something other than flowers. One of my random cuts turned out to look like a duck so I built a landscape around him. I can only assume he’s a he because of his bright colours. I added some marker detail on the duck, such as an eye and feathers. After gluing everything down I felt there was too much white so I added a wash of colour with my Winsor Newton Promarkers.
Nature’s Ice Sculptures
….with the spike in temperatures this weekend I’m not sure how long these will last
Unlike parts of England where they are already contemplating spring, we will certainly see more snow and ice and low temperatures. Right now we’ve gone from an Arctic Vortex to above freezing in a matter of days. It’s not very pretty out there with all the slush and run off from the snow banks. Fortunately I went out on Friday and found these beautiful ice sculptures along the shores of Lake Ontario just a couple hundred metres from our house. The ice is created when the waves hit the rocks and come up over the banks onto the trees and bushes.
It’s rare for Lake Ontario to freeze but you can see the ice flows close to the shore in some of these photos and yes those are swans out on the lake. Most of them have their heads nestled close to their bodies under their wings.
Mama Cormier 